SWF doesn't play with alpha channel

I have a 500Kb FLV file that plays as a progressive download through a 12Kb SWF. This FLV was encoded using On2 VP6 codec to maintain alpha data. This is a logo animation for a website so it is essential that the video plays with alpha channel intact. Just to make sure my animation had an alpha channel, I brought it into After Effects to test with a colored background behind it and sure enough, the alpha channel was there, perfect!
Now in Dreamweaver, when I tested, the FLV plays through the SWF, as it should. However, there is a white square around my video now and the alpha channel is lost.
I even made sure to select Wmode "transparent" and double-checked my code and saw that I had the correct tag <param name="wmode" value="transparent"/>
View my site at http://www.customchromefx.com
I have played many embedded SWF's with alpha's before. I think the FLV still has the alpha, and the problem is in the SWF that plays the FLV that is giving me the white box? Is there a way around this, perhaps a transparent SWF player or something? Thank you for viewing...

Okay, so I figured out a way to make my compressed FLV video play with alpha.
I imported into Flash. Checked the box to "Embed FLV in SWF" and clicked next, and Finish. I made sure the stage area and FPS was set to the same settings as the FLV video.
In publish settings I used Flash 9,then un-checked compress movie and Published. This new SWF maintained the same file size as the FLV, while also playing with the alpha channel.
I then imported the SWF into Dreamweaver, and set Wmode to "transparent."
I now have a 45 second video (originally a 115Mb quicktime) squeezed down to a measly 500Kb SWF that also has an alpha channel. Sweet!

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Hi there Schumi-z!
Well, it seems many poeple have the very same problem. Let me explain what I have got and what I look for.
I am working on a simple video editor. This program is to take a video as input, read the video and "chop" it automatically. Taken certain frames to different new videos, from one to 10 or more, according to certain parameters of the frame analized.
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Can no longer import QT files with alpha channel

I have been using these client supplied QT with alpha channel files just fine for weeks, then all of a sudden, after a crash the other day, I was unable to open sequences with these files and exoprt them, the exporter would just freeze. the clips played in the timeline, but VERY sluggish.
On the reccomendation of a few posts around here, I removed the clips from the project, and now I cannot import them back in, I get a "the importer reported a generic error" message. I am able to open in QT pro and export to a new file that will import to PPro, but I lose the alpha channel.
As always, I'm up against a deadline and any help would be greatly appreciated.
I have installed QT 7.07, no help.
I'm on a windows 7 machine running CS master collection 5.0, Quad core AMD with 8 gig RAM.
These files worked fine just days ago!!!!
BTW, I just switched over to Premiere a few months ago and to honest I can't understand how anyone would stick with this buggy software, as a professional I've never used anything this bad before.

Welcome to the forum.
Try these. Attempt to re-import after each one:
Clean the media cache database via Edit | Preferences | Media
If step 2 doesn't work, then find all the .qtindex, .mpgindex, .cfa and .pek files associated with the media that's supposed to be in your project and delete them. Then clean the media cache database again.
Launch Pr and while it's launching, hold down the Alt + Shift keys until the Welcome screen appears. Alt resets your preferences and Shift resets the plug-in cache.
To address the other issues you say you've been having with Pr, you should start a different thread (or threads). Coming from other editors, there may be a difference in the way Pr does things that produce unexpected results that may be seen as bugs. More serious issues, such as crashes, can often be caused by 3rd-party hardware like AJA, Matrox or BlackMagic and the associated drivers. Outdated or incorrect drivers for audio and video cards can also cause problems. I recommend that you start troubleshooting those areas first.
Other issues may have workarounds. If you have serious, reproducible problems that have no workaround, then please file bug reports here:
Adobe - Feature Request/Bug Report Form
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Hello!
I'm working with one Finnish children's feature film which will star end of this year as an DIT. Movie will include lot's of green screen and the production want's me to do chroma keyed DNxHD 36 renders with alpha channel for AVID editorial. So far I have found out that neither davinci desolve nor assimilate scratch can't do it. Is it possible to render DNxHD with alpha channel from AE? And can Avid import these files with alpha channel? All help is needed and appreciated.
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Are you sure your alpha is there? (check by pressing "a" with the mouse over the view window).
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As a matter of fact, maybe you can check in QT Player, load it into QuickTime Player, cmd-j, click on the video track and play with the transparency setting. Try Straight Alpha - that should lead to the background going white - then you'll know its coming out of Shake properly and concentrate on getting FCP to recognize it...
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The last bit, (for simplicity), just makes sure I copy over the alpha channel of old image to the new image, and assumes the color was black. This doesn't make any real speed difference.
Now that runs lightning quick, but interestingly, see the bit I've commented out? The alternative to setting the ARGB values was to just draw the old image onto the new image. For a 640x512 image, this command (drawImage) took a whopping 36 SECONDS to complete! This may hint that the problem is to do with conversion.
Anyhow, I got rather excited. The conversion went quickly. Here's the rub though, the image took 9 seconds to save using ImageIO.write, just the same as if I had never converted it. :(
SOOOOOOOOOOOO... Why have I told you all this?
Well, I guess I think it narrows dow the problem, but eliminates some solutions (to save people suggesting them).
Bottom line, I still need to know why saving PNGs using ImageIO is so slow. Is there any other way to fix this, short of writing my own PNG writer, and indeed would THAT fix the issue?
For the record, I have a piece of C code that does this in well under a second, so it can't JUST be a case of 'too much number-crunching'.
I really would appreciate any help you can give on this. It's very frustrating.
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robert_ro wrote:
Hello,
I am trying to render a comp with alpha channel QT PNG. When i play the clip it's with black BG but if i imported in AE is with alpha channel. How to render in such way that i can play in Quicktime without the black BG? Am i missing something?
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http://download759.mediafire.com/nb749r29220g/e0636ab0ru6ouoa/Untitled-1.fla

"when played, the animation has alpha channel"
how are you playing the animation? control/enter in Flash, Publishing to a Web page or what?
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What is the aniimation? a series of images, one image moving? Are teweens imvolved?
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I don't know the answer to your question.
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http://www.mrfilmbiz.com/
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As Szalam said, the b/w image can be used as a luma matte.
Also check if the actual piece of footage has an embedded alpha channel, i.e when you import it AE should know there is an alpha channel and let you know in the top of the project window when you select the element (or "interpret footage").
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This has been broken forever in OS X, and I don't know why, because it used to work just fine. I suspect the engineers did something to QuickTime that causes this problem, but it has been borked for so long I don't remember when the ability to correctly display files went wrong. I just remember that once upon a time all sorts of things from Apple worked correctly in displaying such files, but pretty much nothing does now. This includes the Finder, Preview, QuickLook, and various third-party image browsers that use Apple's own system level image handling abilities, such as VitaminSee or CocoaViewX. When I need to actually see what's there, I browse with Adobe's Bridge.
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When I import .mxf File, shot on a Canon C300, into after effects, the alpha channel options are greyed out, when I look in, interpret footage, main. This also is the case importing .MP4 files, shot on a Gopro hero 3.
Better question: Where do you expect that Alpha channel to come from and contain any useful info for transparency? You're making a fuss over a non-issue. Unless you apply keying or other methods of creating transparency, even if there were an Alpha channel it would be fully opaque and then what's the point?
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bogiesan
Message was edited by: David Bogie Chq-1

SWF doesn't play with alpha channel

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